Fergie: Walter Smith Has Already Been On The Phone

Sir Alex Ferguson is happy with our Champions League draw, with our toughest opponent being Valencia, who have since sold their best two players from last season, David Villa and David Silva.

“You can’t complain about that, it’s a good draw for us,” said Ferguson. “You always look at the travelling side of it and the only one that’s of any great distance is the trip to Turkey. Walter Smith’s already been on the phone, talking about tickets for Old Trafford. Like me, he’s really looking forward to our games against each other.”

Smith has also given his reaction to the game, claiming the opening game at Old Trafford is as tough as it gets.

“It’s a great game to kick off the campaign with and there’s no question we couldn’t have got a tougher one,” said Smith. “Any footballer worth his salt would want to go and play at Old Trafford, so it’s a game that we will look forward to. They have a supreme pedigree and it’s not often they don’t make it to the late stages. They achieve a great level of consistency in European competition, but we know all about them and it will be a challenge we will look forward to.”

Travelling? These are men who are finely tuned to be in peak condition. A wee bit of a travel would have my granny in the need of a nap. Now if sitting on a seat for an amount of time is gonna fuck our players up, then Rangers is a shit draw. The boys will be busted after sitting on a coach for near FOUR hours. Swear to Jesus i saw Dimi Berbatov moisturising his hands on the plane, during the American tour, in a nice comfy wee bed i'm even pretty sure the squad were wearing MATCHING FECKIN PYJAMAS. Travelling, what a load of old tosh as 'Arry once said.

Mickji ... if you do much travelling through different time zones you'll know how much it messes your body up. Although you might think it's the reverse ... the more "finely tuned athletes in peak condition" they are ....the bigger the impact.

i think its a decent enough draw, the interesting thing of note is the EPL games following the Champions league games, only 1 of them is an away trip to Valencia followed by Sunderland away. HERE is the list:

The Everton game has been brought forward. Saturday September 11th at 12:45. Not too thrilled about that to be honest. Our international players won't have any time to rest before we go to Goodison. Will Valencia even make it for the game?

09:42 Sir Alex isn't too concerned about Rangers' return to Manchester after 2008 UEFA Cup Final problems. "Too many travelled without tickets then, they'll have a proper allocation this time."

09:41 "It's a nightmare when I've got everybody fit. It's totally unfair that we're only allowed to play 11 players, it should be 16."

09:36 Boss hits back at 'disgusting, bitter' reports over Bebe. "He's in a programme of endurance work because he's not up to the fitness levels we're at. Ability wise he's excellent, a terrific finisher, it's just the fitness levels he needs to get to."

09:34 Sir Alex admits he's been surprised by Rio's return and will look to get him some playing time in the next two weeks. He won't be involved against West Ham and will train with the Reserves today.

09:32 The Boss arrives. Cue awed hush. "Rio Ferdinand's trained this week. He's surprised me with his progress, it's fantastic. Anderson has trained with the first team all week. Wayne Rooney has trained all week, he's back. It's really good news."

Im not so chuffed with the draw for the champions league. Sure it looks easy on paper but its opposition I'd rather not have. Rangers are not a favourite team of mine, I find a team with racist and biggoted fans as part of their make up a disgrace to football and personally would rather play a top 8 club instead. Then theres the famed trip to Turkey, again Id rather play a top 8 club. Valencia is the best tie, allright they dont have the overrated Silva anymore and the great Villa but they still have buckets of talent and they play, like United, with a club ethos. Dont expect it to be any easier than against Valencia of last year. Like United without Ronaldo and Tevez the club are still there or thereabouts.
I dont see the draw as easy or "a good draw" for United as I feel we can beat any team on the day and if you want to win then you have to beat them at some time or other. Playing big teams from the beginning and fighting against the cream of Europe from an early stage sets you up for the rest of the season (remember the group stages in 98-99 season). I dont like the new format of the champions league where smaller and pointless opposition are alowed to take part, not because i want to stamp on the minows of football, rather that I dont want us wasting our time and picking up mindless injuries to the champions of Leictenstein or the runners up in Sweden. Mayeb there should be an introduction to the big clubs of Europe in later rounds once the minows are quite rightly dumped on their fucking arses, a bit like the League cup.
Will look forward to the Valencia match and will have my fingers crossed for the away legs to Rangers and the Turks (blogyloponfloppyspor - cant remember which team it was and i cant be arsed to scroll up) and hope our fans come to no harm, as per.
United through as they will do a proffessional job and hopefully we can then play football.

Have to disagree. The format is flawed, but at least it still gives big European clubs that finished 2nd or 3rd at their domestic league a chance to compete in a tournament that by definition should revolve around league winning sides. In that sense, a team like Arsenal should be glad that they are given a chance to play in the Ch.League even if it means travelling all over Europe and playing lesser known clubs.

@Costas
I don't disagree with your view either but like with club rankings or the winner of the golden boot, teams have rankings (as do leagues) and even a 10th place Premier League team is far better equiped to play decent football than the champions of Sweden or Norway. I think realistically a European League should be created. This would guarantee football for the top clubs but at the same time allow for smaller clubs to enter the league by virtue of their differing styles of play. That would mean though that the teams in the European league do not play in their domestic league. Maybe this would create a bigger interest in the league cup and FA cup. It would also elongate the season as pre season friendlies could be a solely domestic affair. Imagine starting the season with a preseason friendly tournament with Liverpool, City, Spurs, Villa, Everton assuming (highly likely) that they dont qualify for the European League. It produces "two" leagues for the English youngsters to get a foot into and not only play good football but as the domestic league will have a champion and runner up (naturally) they'll be used to winning. That would benefit the England team.
How to switch from European to domestic league would obviously be a complicated one. It would probably have to be done by a more convention European play off cup competition the year before. So domestic champions of England would play domestic league football the following year and the European play off cup. The top four in the European play off cup would replace the bottom 4 in the European league for the following season. For unevenness in the number of teams in the domestic league with review to two clubs coming back from Europe and 1 or none getting promoted could be off set with the Championships play off system (now places 3-6), allowing the best 1,2 or three to be promoted to make up the numbers.
This will guarantee top notch football.

Costas - yea it is bad news it annoys me how the boss now does not have the guts he once had to give players like cleverly a chance. he scored 14 goals for watford last season so he has that attacking pedigree.

barca are going to have some midfield of macherano xavi iniesta supporting villa messi and pedro

I atill think barcelona's squad is a little thin especially upfront. if messi or villa get injured they are in trouble and if it was not for messi the fascists would have won the league, messi I always thought carryed barca last season yet no one called them a one man team. if rooney stayed fit would united have won a double or even a treble

Messi is irreplaceable. But they still have Ibrahimovic and Bojan in case Villa gets injured. Mascherano is a good signing nonetheless and a better player than Toure.

As for Cleverley, I will be disappointed if he leaves on loan, but unless we get a serious injury crisis, he won't play plenty of games this season. Anderson's recovery has given Sir Alex more options. I just hope that in 12 months time he will be knocking on the first team's door. I hope he doesn't go to Wigan though. Talk about a sinking ship...

That would be interesting. A few years back the top clubs in Europe made up a group called the G18 or something like that. That was the idea at the time, but Uefa couldn't afford to lose them and as a result the Ch.League expanded to what we have today. I am not bothered by the fact that we get an odd trip to Turkey or Russia, but 32 teams in the group stages is too much. A good format was when we won it in 99 with 6 groups of 4.

RTNK - Sir Alex mustn't agree with your assessment of Cleverley, or he wouldn't be loaning him out. I've been a critical of Ando, but i still think he's ahead of Cleverley at this moment in time, Im more concerned if Fletch gets injured, that we don't have a similar player to come in and do what Fletch does.

Dave Mack - I believe there's only - 1 GMT in Valencia and - 2 in Turkey. I also believe the players are kept in GMT when they travel. I'd look over it if we were travelling by stage coach and steam boat but nah i'm afraid if the excuse of travel was used, for us having a blip or disaster in another European country, i would be thourougly embarrassed. Look at the NHL as an example. At times they play maybe 3 games a week home and away between two countries which have 3 different time zones. I'm sure it probably happens in other American sports too. So based on modern aviation and how it works in other sports i would dare say that travelling abroad 3 times over the course of 3 months will have little to no affect on men who are in peak condition and averaging an age of mid 20's. That goes for any top team i reckon.